Why The American Left Is Wedded To The Idea Of Perpetual Oppression And Revolution
The problem with cultural progressives is that although they correctly see that there are problems and inequities in society, which have long entrenched history, they do not understand the context and proportion from which they arise. For example, on the topic of racism, sexism, homophobia etc, they correctly identify a long history of oppression for marginalized groups, with that history of oppression still having effects on people in these groups today.
But when talking about America or the West, they do not recognize that up until very recently, human beings had a history of, and arguably a nature that inclined them toward, hierarchy, oppression, moral absolutism, and muzzling of free thought. This is not to excuse any of the past oppression that occurred in society, has effects today, and still occurs today. It is to put into context the fact that these intrinsic problems connected to the many isms and oppression of many groups are not uniquely and intensely a trait of America or the West.
The original undergirding context of human civilization; of oppression, unfairness and suffering, is not okay, and we must work to fix it. But the fact that it occurs in the West is not something unique, in fact the West is unique in how much it has actively fought to end and reverse the history of unfairness.
I would say that modern cultural progressivism (for lack of a better term) originally started in opposition to an established conservative ideology of the general society, one that, at various points in the past, mandated a certain type of religion, forced people to think and act in a certain way, encouraged racial and national supremacism, encouraged now demonstrably wrong practices, one that upheld a racist, sexist, classist way of living.
These entrenched ways of thinking, to varying degrees, permeated human societies for much of the last 1000 years up until at least the last 50 years. And in some cases, until the last 20 or even 10 years. Now, because of this overwhelming history of societies pushing religion to a point of war or to constrain free thought and scientific and philosophical progress, to societies pushing nationalism and racialism in such a way that caused wars, slavery, mistreatment and everything else to the “out” group, to the same things being pushed with respect to gender and any other marked identity, the modern cultural progressives had so much to push back against that, naturally, some of that pushback became extreme and some called for the complete reconstruction of the society.
This is to say that at the very beginning, the modern cultural progressives had good motives and were pushing society towards more justice, tolerance and free thought. But while it was getting a lot right, this movement was overshooting on some things, especially as more progress was won. In America, it was civil rights, sexual liberation, slowly fighting against the narratives, norms and rules that made life unduly harder for anyone who was part of an out group.
As time went on, more of these barriers fell and society became more just for all people. Of course, there are so many lines for which oppression to occur on, attitudes can never completely be perfected, and the history of the oppression and its affects still linger, so we are far from ever getting to perfect justice. But with each new triumph, to keep this cultural progressive project going, new things had to be discovered, and as society became fairer and more tolerant, expectations had to be altered at rapid speed.
This is to say the expectations had to accelerate faster than progress, so even as progress was being made, the feeling was that we were falling more and more short. The reason for this was to keep society continuously engaged in the progressive project. 100 years ago, it was a victory for homosexuality to not be criminalized; now if one doesn’t accept calling a person who is biologically a male but says he/she is female, it is cause for outrage.
I am not being glib, as I understand that for a person who identifies as the gender other than their biology, their experience has been difficult, and the struggle for others to accept them only adds to the mountain of difficulties they must overcome. I am only using this as an example of how far America and the West have come, and that the progressive movement seems to be using tactics to keep people perpetually outraged and perpetually feeling oppressed and afraid so as to keep their project moving forward.
Because much of the things that undergird human life, such as religion, family structure, certain values, marriage etc came about during the time of all of this oppression and unfairness, many of the modern cultural progressives view these values and ways of being as being created during a “backwards time,” and thus should be treated as a vague guide, with condescension, or outright disregarded.
“The American Constitution was created by slaveowners.” “Christianity and all other religions came about when people didn’t have proper medicine, treated ‘different’ people barbarically, and lived half as long as we do now.” The problem with this thinking is that it believes that if you don’t have all of the modern values of the time, you cannot possibly think and create something that is true through history.
This thinking is one of the things that lead you to nihilism (if you care to think deeply about human life), because it essentially means that different people through time are too backwards for us to have much relation to, and that there is no over-arching objective truths about people and human life; essentially all you are is a biological organism existing in a transitory state in a specific time and culture that has no deeper meaning with anything real.
Ironically, while many of these cultural progressives say that religion came about to fill a gap in meaning, happiness, wrong and right, and purpose for people, a new type of religion is arising to fill that exact gap that has been growing as religion and specific family values and structures have eroded in influence.
This religion is anything that you would call wokism, identity politics, social justice crusaders. In its radical crusade to rid the world of any and all types of oppression, it finds oppression in anything, ascribes motives, wants to tear down societies, and demands everyone agree with any new “findings” of what constitutes racism and what doesn’t.
Put another way; it used to be that a religion was mandated by society and to question it, to try to apply science in places where society deemed religion to have the only say, was to be a heritic, and for it you were punished in various ways. Today, when an example of, a new type or element of racism is “discovered,” or as many progressives would say “revealed,” anyone who questions or disagrees with the purported “discovery/revelation” is branded a racist, an enabler of racist, or at best, someone who is ignorant and must be taught that they are wrong.
The irony is that cultural progressivism originally led to cultural relativism. The cultural relativism came in a response to the societies in which a certain type of beliefs, people, race, and way of doing things were mandated to be viewed as superior, without any free thought to investigate if this was actually true, allowed. Not to mention that life is complex and, whether it is between cultures, nations or individual people, it is rare when one is completely right.
All of this led to the natural rising of cultural relativism in the West; which originally encouraged free thinking and tolerance. Now, cultural relativism is often used as an extreme manifestation of the hesitancy to criticize anything an “other” nation or culture does. Because there has been such a long history of bigotry associated with the belief in one way of doing things over another, many on the cultural progressive side do not want to criticize practices by people in other nations, which if they were practiced by people in their society, would be roundly and harshly condemned.
Even though gay marriage is legal, the fact that some bakers don’t want to bake a cake for a gay couple is worthy of outrage, yet we also should be outraged at bigotry against the middle east, never mind that in many middle eastern countries, the vary act of homosexuality leads to jail or even execution.
The irony is that the cultural progressives call for cultural and moral relativism with respect to other nations/cultures who, by the progressives own standards, fail cataclysmically, they take a moral absolutist approach to people who would question if racism and sexism really exist in a specific instance, or to one who is against what is going on with transgenders.
It is the ultimate philosophical hypocrisy, a hypocrisy that in my opinion is so profound, that I cannot ever support it until the hypocrisy is rectified, despite my belief that cultural progressivism has led to much progress. A problem is that many of those on the conservative side who point out these inconsistencies and over reaches, do not do so in good faith, or otherwise do not believe much needs to be changed to make society fairer.
I would generally describe the people who don’t make these arguments in good faith as people who look for holes to poke in the progressive ideology and look to caricature any push for more tolerance as a radical thing that should never be considered. Just as many cultural progressives conflate conservatives with the worst aspects of conservatism to silence them, some conservatives do the same to cultural progressives.
To them I say that just because they might not be right on this specific issue or that they might be philosophically hypocritical, does not mean that none of what they say has merit. The problem I see with modern conservatism is that they are reactive, no proactive, and because of that they spend all their time fighting the progressive force rather than recognizing there are problems that need to be actively solved.
Part of that is down to the disposition many conservatives have, which is to conserve the foundations and history of the society. But another of it is because of the hyper acceleration of the cultural progressives. They are moving so fast that all conservatives can do is try to stop as much of it as they can from going through.
The way that this manifests in American politics is needlessly divisive and damaging to America, because on many or even most of the hot button cultural issues, there is broad consensus in America. If I were to say that on abortion, I am against late term abortion, think that there are real questions about killing, life, and morality, but that in a modern developed society, abortion will happen, whether legal or not.
In this society, the goal should be less abortions; for the pro-life side because they believe it is killing, and for the pro-choice side because you would rather not be in a position where you would want to abort your baby. If the goal is to have less abortions, making abortion illegal would not actually accomplish it in the most effective way; it may reduce abortions by 5, maybe 10%, but it would generally lead to people having unsanctioned, illegal abortions, which by their nature would be more unsafe.
So all outlawing abortion would do is make it more unsafe for the mother. Therefore, we should make late term abortion illegal, and BOTH Democrats and Republicans should work together to identify what are the main causes of situations that precipitate abortions, and work to alleviate that.
This is to say that if abortion is caused by poverty, lack of education, inability to access proper birth control etc, BOTH sides should work to make these conditions less frequent. From that, the pro-lifers would get less overall abortions, and the pro-choicers would still have abortion legal, and less instances where abortion rights must be protected.
While a little complex, I believe a nuanced opinion like this on abortion would receive broad support. The same thing can be used for things like immigration and how to combat racism. But because politics by their very nature require conflict and differentiating, both political parties like to strawman the other side, talk past each other, and emphasize the worst elements of the other belief, in a way to get their supporters angry and ready to vote for them.
This leads to a needless over heating in American politics. On most cultural issues, if you got Americans to sit down and talk with each other, you could get to an agreement between them, or at least a general understanding. This type of nuance and discussion is the only way that we can continue to make progress towards justice in this society without antagonizing people.
If the cultural progressives talk about tolerance and free thinking and not having a certain group of people dictate how others must live, but then in their quest for justice, become that group, a society cannot smoothly make these changes without major conflict. Also, the cultural progressives must stop their alarmism, in which they call for the dismantling of societies and nations founded by people who grew up in “backwards times.”
To their surprise, the ideas of universal human rights, equality, science, forward thinking, and all the philosophical foundations for modern cultural progressivism, were created by people who lived in what they would consider “backwards times.”
We should recognize that things are far from perfect and constantly need to be improved, but that just because not everyone agrees with the particular thing cultural progressives want to act on, it doesn’t mean we have regressed or that we live in an overall oppressive society.
I know it is easier to say this the better off one is, but from any realist perspective, it is true. And in the modern spirit of constantly improving, questioning and thinking, cultural progressives must allow for pushback against them, must accept that they might be going too far in some areas, must accept that the societies that they criticize are the very societies that allow them to make these cultural pushes.
They must recognize that for its flaws, America and the West is extremely good in the context of human history and human nature. They must understand that for there to be deeper meaning in life, that there should be things that are objective and that stay true throughout the ages. Conservatives must also allow for the possibility that they might be mistaken.
They must realize that, while the nation and its history should be protected, we can never be complacent, we must take proactive action to improve society, we must not act in bad faith, and we must understand that some criticism for our nation and society is ok and sometimes necessary. Both sides have a lot they can improve on, but hopefully when they converse and debate, it is in the proper context, with the proper understanding, and with best interests in mind.